Robot Claw

Dragon magazine was the official Dungeons & Dragons printed by the manufacturer, TSR. It ran from 1976 to 2007, and I infrequently purchased issues as a child (usually only when they included new monsters). For the past few years, I have been purchasing old back issues at a local game store, and reading them cover-to-cover (literally!) for humour and nostalgia value.

Many times I have run upon advertisements that I thought were unusual/funny/nostalgic/sad enough to include here on the blog. And so, in the spirit of this post, this week I will be showcasing a large selection of such adverts from the pages of Dragon. Each daily entry will have a theme (of sorts), and the first one today will be based around ‘role playing games’.

The magazines these were taken from date from 1982 through 1991, but the vast majority come from the mid 1980s.

What better place to start than with a D&D advert from about 1982, although at a glance you’ll be mistaken for seeing the 1970s here in the clothes and art. I wonder if a game like the one shown in the photo ever occured?

A downright horrible ad from about the same time for another TSR role playing game, the space-themed Star Frontiers. I include this because the art is by legendary fantasy artist Jeff Easley, who would go on to paint about a million pieces of art far, far better than this. I bet he cringes everytime he remembers just how awful this is. (Fun fact: doesn’t the boy on the left look like a young Oz Clarke with hair?)

Despite the magazine being (mostly) for TSR product, the majority of advertisements were for other games. These range from forgettable and bland, to downright horrible, to just awe-encompassing in their weirdness or outrageous claims. Two examples of the latter:

Gods Of Harn was apparently “The standard by which fantasy religious systems will be judged”… I wonder how that worked out?

This full-page ad would have cost the company big $$$. Would you buy the game based on this? (I will admit the art – and especially caption – is craptacular!)

Speaking of diving right off the deep end with regards to marketing, check out these…

That’s the entire ad, which is about 2×2 inches in the magazine. Good to know that this Noon Drakon was drawn by a REAL artist (as opposed to an amateur).

And here we have an ad for a game with no rules that still manages to be better than any other game ever made. Given the (lack of) material in this ad, it’s hard to believe anyone sent the $20 (approximately $45 today) for Lords Of Space!

Amidst all the RPG and other (as you will see this week) adverts, every now and then a gamebook ad pops up. This was of course during the heyday of the medium, and it’s interesting to see how they were advertised in the USA back in those days. Here is a selection (click to enlarge):

Here’s a US Fighting Fantasy ad:

The art, if you’re wondering, comes from the US imprint of the second FF book, Citadel Of Chaos.

Here’s an unexpected advert for another FF-related product:

It’s a nice ad for Black and White, but it forgot to mention the puzzle book is almost impossible to solve!

This next ad is of interest to people that know altogether far too much about gamebooks:

That there is a full colour, back cover advertisement for a product that was never released as shown (due to licensing issues). Gamebook collector that I am, I find this more than a little enticing. I do have some ‘Middle Earth Quest’ books (as they would eventually be called), but I’d love to know what happened to those samples shown in that photo.

Enough gamebooks! Check out this ad:

Yes, this is White Dwarf magazine before the existence of Warhammer. In England last year I told an employee at a Games Workshop store I used to buy White Dwarf back when it was an RPG magazine and he looked at me like I was talking nonsense. I draw your attention by the way to the blurb at lower right. When was the last time you saw a magazine advertised on the basis of who the editor was?

I’ll end today with one more RPG advert, this time for the USA developed Doctor Who RPG:

I have included this ad for a reason. I have a feeling that my brother’s thoughts are frequently drifting to the following:

What shall I purchase my brother as a gift when he completes his PhD later this year?

The solution, brother of mine, is in the above scan. Hint: Look closely between the pewter figurines of the Dalek and the Brigadier 🙂